You may have noticed, things have changed with the El Food Brothers. This review features no mention of beer, El Food One had a water and El Food Two something that looked like a Lemsip. Theres no meaty burgers, carb-loaded Pie and Mash or infinite amounts of chicken wings. Whats left?
Fish. The final frontier. El Food Two suggests we give Sushi a go. We’ve heard the word before, and have the laymans view of it.
It’s all raw fish isn’t it?
A quick google confirms our suspicions, but Sushi doesn’t have to be raw fish at all. In fact a lot of it is just rice and veg, which doesn’t make us any more comfortable.
It takes us until Friday to pluck up the courage to hit the fish (slap the bass?). Deciding on the classic ‘Generation Game’ style of Sushi, as we’ve got no chance if presented with a menu to choose from. Wasabi is the destination for our lunch time fishing trip.
We are immediately out of our comfort zone as we pass over the Northern Quarter border to ‘the-rest-of-Manchester’ and immediately loose 300 cool points. But we have a lot of cool points to play with, so we keep like ‘Snoopy in Shades’ as we try and navigate to the Printworks.
Heading randomly down streets, we chose a left, as I ask the question is this where the Printworks is, El Food Two is pointing at the, frankly ludicrously large sinage hanging proudly on the wall. Its safe to say our boat has sailed true and the shore is in site.
Wasabi is equally well signposted, with its neon sign our lighthouse in the dark of the Printworks.
I can tell El Food Two is still not sure on this, as he makes me put my foot on the shores of Wasabi first.
Its cosy in here, just enough room to swing a lucky cat, or the Sushi belt and the seats around it. We are quickly shown to our seat, nestled between fellow sailors who must be the rank of Admiral or at least Captain, compared to our First-mate and Cabin Boy status.
Theres some rough seas following the smooth sailing from our mooring, and a touch of sea sickness as we suddenly realise we are far from the shore, and neither of us even know which way Port and Starboard are.
The seas calm as a member of the crew comes to speak with us. I take the ‘own-up-to-not-having-even-learnt-to-swim’ tactic and we get thrown a much needed life raft, as we get the Idiots Guide to Sushi.
Pick what you want off the belt. Theres a big picture up of what everything is, and the colour coding tells you how much it costs. Oh, and its £1 for the Grey ones at lunch time. Winner, we’ll stick to the greys and we can’t go wrong.
Lets do this. Grab us those pots off the side. “Whats that pink stuff? Thats not Wasabi” says El Food Two. Pickled Ginger I reply (I’ve done Sushi once before, it wasn’t very good and very expensive. It was a chain I shall not mention, as I think we’ve got one too many pending law suits. It rhymes with Mo Pushi)
Another pot is grabbed, full of the green stuff. “You know its just horseradish dyed green” I pipe up, in a classic attempt of wanting to seem like I know what I’m doing. No one is impressed.
Ok, we can do this, we’ve got the ship the right way up and heading in what we think is the right direction, but we still can’t tell you which way is Starboard. Ride on the the São Food Brothers as I take you on our high seas adventure, picture by picture.
That concludes our sail of the seven (five then) seas. We had an Katsu egg as well, but failed to get a picture of that. You think you’ve seen all the ways of cooking eggs, but then something like this surprises you. I shall insist on having all my eggs katsu-ed from now on.
We head to the till to pay, only a fiver for me as I am exclusively drinking water. I’m more than happy with the food and experience for that money, and El Food Two even said he might come again.
Maybe next time we’ll have learnt our Starboard from our Port. Our Hoso Maki’s from our Gunkan. Or maybe at least we’ll have learnt how to swim.
7 Kastu Eggs out of 10 Katsu Chickens
Maybe fish is good from the brain, because the same evening, we recorded our very first podcast. Which we know has made at least 4 people laugh. As Barbie Girl was for Aqua, this could be our breakthrough hit. Listen now so you can say you liked our old stuff better, and subscribe at iTunes